


Always There

by evilhippo



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-02
Updated: 2011-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:20:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilhippo/pseuds/evilhippo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a 2000-year wait, there are certain to be places where stories intersect.  Reinette finds that there is more than one man with the impertinence not to age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always There

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [bwinter on LJ](http://bwinter.livejournal.com) as part of the [dwsanta gift exchange](http://dwsanta.livejournal.com).

Once, in a broken time, as the stars went out and all but the smallest, bluest of planets had long since gone dark, a mythic man of plastic sat and waited. He weathered storms, endured uprisings, and he followed his box wherever it went, day by day, month by month, year by century by millennium.

As he and the box travelled he amassed a great number of treasures, each a memory he saved with the hope of one day sharing it with another. His collections quickly grew too large, however, and he soon found himself posing as a dealer in antiquities. He kept shop in several small towns, which grew by turns into larger towns and then into cities, always selling his wares, his memories and their stories, to the collectors and the curious.

It was in Paris, in one of these shops, that he fist met a young girl of barely seven, hiding behind her mother's skirts while she searched for a replacement for a broken timepiece. Being a curious girl, she had slipped away into the back rooms. She cared little whether the clock was replaced; in fact, for reasons all her own, she had preferred it broken.

When she was finally found she was crouched between wooden mannequins, half-clad in a Roman breastplate that was nearly as tall as she. He had picked her up out of it gently with a small, amused smile on his face, returning her to her mother's side without a word.

-

She met him a second time in the halls of Versailles as he presented the Pandorica to her King. She'd wanted it for the mystery and the puzzle, and because its legend had been one of her favourites as a girl. He'd purchased it for the prestige of adding it to his private collection, and for the advantages that come when one makes such an extravagant gift to one's lover. What she hadn't expected was that the young British man peddling the box would bear such a strong resemblance to the man in the shop from her youth.

-

Every so often she visited the Pandorica, running her hands across the clockwork relief on its surface. They reminded her of the masked men that followed her through her life, but it was reassuringly silent despite the motif on its face. Occasionally she found herself wondering whether it was somehow connected with her man from the fireplace. Yet, she'd remind herself, it was precisely his opposite. It was always there and had always been, all through history. The box and its immortal guard, taking the long route through time. Some of the servants even claimed that they had seen the Centurion standing guard at night. Sometimes, to amuse herself, she searched for clues. Sometimes she was certain there were footprints near the window, but never more than that.

She had them keep the window unlocked, just in case.

-

The third time they met was much like the first. The clock had been broken again, this time along with all the other clocks in Versailles, and she had returned to the shop to replace them, and to see if she had been right, if he was in fact still the same man who'd picked her up out of his back room all those years ago.

This time he knew her, but only in title. He never made the connection between her and the little girl in his shop all those years ago, but he was the same man, in deed and in manner and, impossibly, in age.

As he helped her choose the replacement clocks he told her each of their stories, from the older grandfather clocks (one of which had been used by Shakespeare in a production of Julius Caesar) to the modern rococo-style clocks that were preferred in the palace. He was both foreign and impossibly familiar, ancient and yet inextricably and constantly a part of the present. It was the most she'd ever spoken with him, and she noticed something in his stories, but whether it was simply a note of solitude and long-unrequited desire or that the stories seemed like they were just a rehearsal for a more important retelling, she could not say for certain.

Fascinated though she was by this man and his tales, who never seemed to age and never seemed to be any less helpful in replacing what had been broken, she found herself unable to speak to him about anything other than the trinkets he peddled in his shop.

She chose the clocks that would replace those that were broken and returned to Versailles.

She still had a valise by her bedside, with a folded map of the night sky lying atop it.

-

“Is this your vessel?” she'd asked much later, long after the valise had been packed away (but not unpacked), and after several nights spent waiting at the foot of the box.

“My what?” the Centurion shop-keep replied. He looked entirely out of place in the room, standing at an awkward distance from the box and watching her with a wariness that, though he may have said she was flattering herself in saying so, seemed to hide a longing for companionship.

“I once knew a man who never seemed to age, who came to me throughout my life—always when I needed him, never otherwise. And here you are, never trailing far behind, ready to pick up the pieces.”

He shuffled uncomfortably, his Roman armour creaking with age. “I wouldn't say that.”

“You spend your nights here at the Pandorica's side, and you you spend your days selling memories. Which memory is this?”

A silent moment stretched itself out to fill the room as he studied her, seemingly for the first time. She'd been right, then. A smile showed under the shadow of his helm.

“That's a very long story,” he replied.

-

This is the tale of how I met Rory Williams: the impossibly-named, impossibly-ancient Roman Centurion, waiting and guarding the Pandorica. So far as I know, he's still out there waiting. But this man, this mad, impossible fairy-tale man—I know he gets his happy ending, even if I'm jealous that it's not with me. He is what we all hope for: loyal, faithful, and willing to take the long route. The one his stories are truly meant for is lucky indeed.


End file.
